Murmures du rucher

“Bees have a particularly strong voice in our 21st century as it nears the end of its first quarter. Their presence is political — they are both a shield and a banner for environmental concerns; economic — during pollination season in the United States, hives are traded for thousands of dollars, while in China, farmers pollinate their orchards by hand with brushes; and above all, symbolic — Einstein’s supposed link between the survival of bees and that of humankind continues to haunt our collective imagination.

This project seeks to give bees a poetic and musical voice. Drawing from Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Life of the Bee, it proposes to set the life of a hive to music in a melologue for 12 musicians and a narrator. The piece will be built in seven scenes, weaving together excerpts from the text and the musicians’ performance, with both the narrative arc and the musical writing echoing the cyclical nature of hive life.

The structure of Maeterlinck’s book — short chapters tracing the different stages of hive life, with various protagonists (queens, princesses, workers, drones, predators, etc.) appearing in turn — lends itself particularly well to this kind of approach. Coming from a jazz background, I’m especially familiar with the album format, a sequence of short pieces, and this kind of text structure speaks to me deeply.

Maeterlinck’s writing is inherently musical, and his literary work has inspired many composers throughout the 20th century. Drawing today from his essays on the plant and insect world is both a way of continuing that long musical tradition and a refreshing, thoughtful step off the beaten path.”

Fiona Monbet